Project Summary Bacteria inhabit every niche on the face of the planet ranging from hydrothermal vents, to lakes hidden under the polar ice caps, to the intestines of mammals. Accordingly, these microbes have evolved numerous clever and unique strategies to cope with a wide range of challenging conditions. Bacteria possess complex regulatory circuits that coordinate metabolic flux with growth, cell envelope composition, and cell cycle progression to ensure the efficient partitioning of limited resources, maximize proliferative potential, and preserve viability in response to frequently changing conditions. These critical regulatory networks are the bacterial equivalent of an Achilles' heel, as defects in these systems render bacteria unable to adapt to changes in temperature, nutrient availability, osmotic and oxidative stress, and challenges presented by antibiotics, other microbes, and host immune systems. Delineating and understanding how microbes respond to stress impacts areas such as biotechnology, ecology, environmental biology, geochemical cycles, as well as the symbiosis and pathogenesis relationships that microbes establish with their eukaryotic hosts. The latest advances in the field will be the subject of the 2018 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Microbial Stress Response to be held from July 15-20 at Mount Holyoke College. This meeting will bring together a demographically diverse group of 200 international scientists seeking to understand how microbes sense and respond to challenging and ever-changing environments. Attendees are encouraged to present posters of their most exciting research. Emphasis will be placed on new approaches to understanding interactions between microbes and the environment, particularly modern imaging, genetic, metagenomic, and computational strategies for the analysis of bacterial physiology and community structures under conditions of stress and competition. A key feature of this conference is its welcoming and highly interactive environment that brings together investigators at all levels. Invited speakers include established and highly recognized scientists as well as junior investigators. Over 50% of invited speakers are women and 20% of oral presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts with an emphasis on those by new investigators, postdoctoral scientists and graduate students. Postdoctoral and graduate student participation is further encouraged by the accompanying Gordon Research Seminar (GRS), organized by postdoctoral and graduate scientists for their peers. We anticipate the 2018 Microbial Stress Response GRC will continue the success of its predecessors where cutting edge discoveries are unveiled for the first time to a multidisciplinary and critical audience.